In 1869, when the final spike was driven into the Transcontinental
Railroad, few were prepared for its seismic aftershocks. Once a
hodgepodge of short, squabbling lines, America's railways soon exploded
into a titanic industry helmed by a pageant of speculators, crooks, and
visionaries. The vicious competition between empire builders such as
Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and E. H. Harriman
sparked stock market frenzies, panics, and crashes; provoked strikes
that upended the relationship between management and labor; transformed
the nation's geography; and culminated in a ferocious two-man battle
that shook the nation's financial markets to their foundations and
produced dramatic, lasting changes in the interplay of business and
government.
Spanning four decades and featuring some of the most iconic figures of the Gilded Age,
Iron Empires reveals how the robber barons drove the country into the twentieth century--and almost sent it off the rails.
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